Republican control of the Senate, which would make Senator Mitch McConnell the new Majority Leader, may have practical policy impacts, some of which will be of great interest to global investors. Although the U.S. midterm elections remain six months away, oddsmakers are increasingly predicting the Grand Old Party (GOP) will assume majority control over the Senate […]

Raising the U.S. minimum wage is a powerful political idea that will increase both sales and labor costs for businesses. The debate over increasing the minimum wage in the U.S. keeps getting more complicated. No longer is it a trade-off between losing jobs or raising wages. President Obama used this year’s State of the Union […]

In response to the recent turmoil in Ukraine, the IMF is working to extend financial assistance but will likely ask for reforms in the public, business and energy sectors. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) dispatched a “fact finding” mission to Ukraine the first week of March to consult on a financial program to support the […]

Opium cultivation continues to flourish in Afghanistan, jeopardizing stability, development and health. The UN reported record high opium cultivation in Afghanistan this year, according to a survey released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. This brings production to 5,500 tons, an increase of nearly 50% since 2012. Out of a total of 34 […]

Robin Harding summarized the situation that Janet Yellen, President Obama’s pick for Federal Reserve chair, has inherited in the Financial Times last week: The federal government is shut down. The unemployment rate is still up at 7.3 per cent, four years into a recovery. The institution you will lead is formidable but war-weary; intellectual positions are […]

Necessity makes strange bedfellows. In the wake of US President Barack Obama’s phone call to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in September, a US-Iran détente may be possible. Even with a new warmth between the two countries, a number of questions have been raised, the most obvious being “what now?” With the states slowly inching towards […]

President Obama’s policy toward the Syrian civil war, and particularly Bashar Al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in that conflict, is being tested. At the time of writing, the United Nations inspection team in Syria has not yet confirmed that chemical weapons were used against Syrian civilians, but all signs indicate that the rumors flying from […]

“If all GB athletes wore rainbow flags and Cameron turned up to the Kremlin with a rainbow tie, then that would be great,” said Anna Grigoryeva, 24, a Cambridge student from Moscow. “But they’re not going to.“ Some members of the international community have proposed a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, as […]

“Don’t boycott the Games.” This sentiment can be heard from several sides of the debate regarding Putin’s ban on homosexual athletes competing in Sochi at the Winter Olympics in 2014. There are three distinct motivations for not wanting to boycott the Games. The least obvious opponent of a boycott is arguably the Russian LGBT Network. […]

Earlier this year the Korean peninsula was anything but stable. The third North Korean nuclear test on February 12th sparked fresh rounds of bellicose rhetoric and actions on both sides of the border, with the North Korean military taking on a particularly reactive position. At the head of the ensuing drama were Kim Jong-un, the […]